5.  The applicant was born in 1973 and lives in Bucharest.
6.  On 8 April 2002 the Ministry of the Interior notified the division of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Supreme Court of Justice responsible for handling organised crime and drug trafficking cases (“the Prosecutor’s Office”) that the applicant, T.T., S.M. and S.I. were believed to be selling ecstasy that had been brought into the country from Israel.
7.  On the same day, a prosecutor authorised the tapping of the telephone of those involved and assigned undercover agents to the operation. The applicant’s telephone was apparently not tapped.
8.  A police informant facilitated contact between T.T. and L.G., on the one hand, and the undercover agents pretending to be potential buyers, on the other hand. On 10 April 2002 the police and prosecutor apprehended T.T. and L.G. while they were trying to sell 5,000 tablets of ecstasy to the undercover agents. Arrested and questioned on the same date, allegedly without the presence of a lawyer, they confessed that they had taken part in drug trafficking. In addition, T.T. made incriminating statements about the applicant.
9.  Again on 10 April 2002, the police broke into the applicant’s apartment, in his absence, and searched for drugs. When the applicant and his wife returned home, the police officers, who did not identify themselves, admitted that they did not have a warrant for the search. They then conducted searches of the applicant and his car, but no illegal substances were found.
10.  In the same evening of 10 April 2002, at the end of the search, the applicant was taken into custody on suspicion of trafficking in dangerous drugs, a crime prohibited by Law no. 143/2000 on the fight against drug trafficking and illegal drug use (“Law no. 143”).
11.  On 11 April 2002 the Prosecutor’s Office decided to keep the applicant in custody for five days.
12.  On 15 April 2002 the police informant gave statements, detailed by the prosecutor in a report. The informant reported that in March 2002 the applicant had offered to sell him 12,000 tablets of ecstasy brought into the country from Israel. The drugs were allegedly intended to be held in the applicant’s home, following the latter’s receipt of the tablets from L.G. The three suspects were reported to have already sold 5,000 of the 12,000 tablets.
13.  Based on that report, the prosecutor decided, on 15 April 2002, to start criminal proceedings against the applicant (începerea urmăririi penale) and ordered that he be placed in pre-trial detention for twenty-five days. The applicant was released pending trial on 5 July 2003 by the Bucharest County Court.
14.  On 15 May 2002 the applicant, T.T. and L.G. were committed for trial on charges of drug trafficking. The prosecutor based the charges on the initial confessions made by T.T. and L.G., the reports by the undercover agents and the informant, witness statements, and transcripts of telephone conversations between the suspects, one of them allegedly taking place on 10 April 2002 between the applicant and T.T. They both denied that the conversation had been about drugs.
15.  The case was examined by the Bucharest County Court. T.T. and L.G. retracted their confessions and asked the court not to take them into account, as they had been without legal representation at that time. The applicant denied any participation in drug trafficking.
16.  A witness, D.C., who had temporarily shared the same prison cell with the defendants, declared that L.G. had agreed to take the full blame. The accused contested the veracity of those statements.
17.  On 9 March 2004 the defence requested that the audio tapes of the telephone conversations be certified by expert examination. In order to perform that task, the Bucharest National Institute for Forensic Investigation (Institutul Naţional de Expertise Criminalistice – “the Institute”) asked that the technical device used for making the recordings be put at their disposal for examination. The Ministry of Administration and the Interior, which had carried out the recording, informed the court that it was not possible to remove the equipment from its premises and that only experts with the required security clearance could be allowed in its vicinity. As the experts from the Institute did not have such clearance, it was not possible to carry out the expert examination. The defence did not insist on this evidence being produced.
The Prosecutor’s Office also informed the court that the manner in which the authorised telephone tapping was carried out was classified information.
18.  The defence requested that the undercover agents and the informant be heard by the County Court. The Prosecutor’s Office refused and informed the court that, under Law no. 143, their identities could not be revealed and that, in any event, that Law recognised as evidence the reports drafted by them.
19.  The court gave judgment on 14 July 2004, based on the evidence in the file and the testimony given by the accused and by witnesses before it during the proceedings. It acquitted the applicant on the grounds that there was no solid evidence in the file to support the charges against him. In particular, it noted that the conversation adduced as evidence did not explicitly refer to drugs and that the explanations offered by the applicant and T.T. for its content were plausible; it also noted that the only incriminating evidence was T.T.’s initial confession to the police which he had retracted and which, in any case, did not corroborate the remaining evidence in so far as the applicant’s situation was concerned.
20.  The court dismissed T.T. and L.G.’s allegations of a breach of their defence rights, as it found that they had been assisted by a legal-aid lawyer during the investigation. The court convicted T.T. and L.G. of drug trafficking.
21.  On 18 November 2004 the Bucharest Court of Appeal reversed the judgment and convicted the applicant of drug trafficking, but that decision was quashed on 31 May 2005 by the High Court of Cassation and Justice (formerly known as the Supreme Court of Justice) because defence counsel had not appeared in the appeal proceedings. The case was sent back to the Court of Appeal for re-examination of the appeal.
22.  The applicant again requested that the audio tape containing the telephone conversations be examined by an expert to confirm whether it was authentic and complete. In his view, not all relevant conversations had been presented publicly in court and that had prevented the court from getting an overall picture of what had happened that day and had allowed his conversation with T.T. to be taken out of context. In that connection, he also requested that the Prosecutor’s Office produce a copy of the authorisations for interception of the telephone communications. Lastly, the applicant requested that witnesses, including D.C. and the informant, be heard and proposed that the informant be heard at a secret hearing, as allowed by Law no. 143, if his protection needed to be ensured.
23.  In his address to the court, defence counsel pointed out that no drugs had been found in the applicant’s home during the search that took place on 10 April 2002. He also contended that T.T.’s first handwritten statement to the prosecutor was not signed by counsel. He further challenged D.C.’s statements before the prosecutor, arguing that the witness was a notorious police informant. Lastly, he reiterated the request for expert examination of the tapes.
24.  It appears that the Court of Appeal did not hear evidence directly from the applicant.
25.  In a decision of 13 October 2005 the Court of Appeal quashed the County Court judgment, convicted the applicant of drug trafficking and sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment. The court took into account T.T.’s handwritten statement and the telephone conversation recorded between the applicant and T.T., and considered that the applicant’s statements during the investigation and before the court did not corroborate the evidence in the file, which proved that the applicant had conducted himself dishonestly.
26.  The applicant appealed on points of law before the High Court of Cassation and Justice. He argued that the Court of Appeal had made an erroneous application of the law and that essential factual errors had occurred in the lower court’s decision. He contested the way the Court of Appeal had used the handwritten statement given by T.T. and the audio tapes. He argued that in presenting only a part of the transcripts of conversations the prosecutor had removed those discussions from their context and allowed for ambiguity which was wrongly interpreted by the court to his disadvantage. He reiterated his complaint that the prosecutor had refused to allow the records to be verified by an expert. He argued that the court had ignored the evidence given in court and had based its decision solely on the evidence led by the prosecutor, thus failing to examine the abundant evidence in his favour. The applicant challenged the validity of the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeal that he was dishonest.
27.  On 3 February 2006 the High Court held a hearing in the case. The applicant was not present, but his counsel represented him and argued the case for the defence.
28.  On the same date the High Court rendered its final decision, dismissing the appeal as ill-founded. The court re-examined the file and, based on the reports of the undercover operations, T.T.’s initial statements to the police and the transcripts of the conversations as presented by the prosecutor, upheld the conviction. The court considered that the evidence cited by the applicant in his defence was not credible and that despite T.T.’s change of position, there was no reason to set aside his previous statements.